On Why Purebreed Horses are Immense Treasures and Bioengineered Mess
Horses are a rare and luxurious commodity on Zaenerth, and finding an unmodified purebreed horse is largely harder than finding a needle in a pile of fungrass.
The reason for this rarity is simple: horses, and a lot of other animals of Earth, have a hard time travelling through the Faraday's Current. The first attempts of bringing livestock and mounts in other stellar systems often resulted in severe illnesses, cancerous growth, or sudden death. And then there's the Faraday's Sleipnir incident..
Wealthy groups or individuals managed to find vichroms generous enough to bring their horses with them, via cryosleep, but even then incidents occurred.
It just seems that space doesn't like horses very much.
Humans had to adapt on the different worlds they settled in, often using local wildlife or domesticated life as mounts, or creating automatons mimicking the equine beasts.
On Zaenerth, finding someone on a horse, a real horse, is often sign of wealth. Or they stole it.
In the middle-late Golden Space Age, genetically modified breeds of horses were created, in an attempt to withstand the effects of the Current on them. It worked, to some extant, resulting in horses that were powerful, with incredible health and regenerative abilities, but also wilder, with short temper and more often than not…. Explosive and destructive outbursts of rage, fear, sadness or joy.
The joys of the Current, mixed with the stubbornness of men.
